


Beneath Our Skins

by nigellecter



Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-27 21:00:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8416573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigellecter/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: Meeting of two broken men ensue. There shall be violence, angst and oozing emotions. A drabble between my two RP accounts, nigellecter and kaeciliusthezealct.





	1. Chapter 1

On some nights, restless and tossing and turning as Nigel lies in bed, his mind is full of the memory of the contours, an incessant threads unfurling as the invading illumination becomes overwhelmingly deja-vu. Countless nights he had heard the symphonies of serenades conjure up such exquisite radiance and fueled his existence. He’s still encumbered by the room with a thousand cobwebs entwined to snare him in a petrified gloom. Absent of Gabi’s vibrant persona and with the missing piece he sought after gone, no amount of ephemeral addictions and debaucheries would cure him. Yet, here he was, with more untameable inevitability upon him as he was backtracking the memory of his true love with every step of the way. Every heartbeat and every breath, with his smile and tears in synch, oozing limerence and yearning desire as his bones ache with tender longing. His poetic lyricism turns bitter, fragile, a little mad yet hopeful and valiant. 

Even when his thoughts had stopped from the coma that continued to hurl him through the passage of time, the blue sash of the New York sky becomes so painfully real. The faint haloes ripple across the unreality of it all, as his dilated hazel, overly blown with etched crimson gazes and struggles to focus. In the midst of being blackmailed and having to deal with backstabbers who had stuck Darko and him into a sticky situation, he still allots enough time to tend his utmost attention to the expansion of his club in Bucharest to open a second franchise in New York. Through multitudes of business trips for him to check out and scrutinize the old raggedy bar’s unbelievable transformation as it had been completely renovated and refurbished to wear a new facade.

As an idle finger sluggishly licks over the brim of the tumbler, the stool Nigel perches atop draws a smooth quarter circle towards the other who walks towards him in striking likeness of his own confident saunter. Nigel’s movement becomes utilitarian as his shoulders dip into the counter, looking into the dimly-lit, shady alleyway. The same finger that had been coated with soft flavors of burnt sugar and caramel, balances a half-smoked cigarette. Thinned lips cruelly quirks up in a fleeting smirk before exhaling in the other’s direction, drawing a continuous swirl of smoke along with his barely noticeable swallow. A huff-like chuckle mirrors that of the other figure in long, swishing ponytail and layers of robes and sash he hadn’t ever seen someone wear, probably Japanese-inspired, a mishmash of Asiana. 

His immediate association when he gazes into the unfathomable purple eyes of the stardust is the feel of decay and tingling flesh, fissuring through those intricate weavings of latticework, all the cracks threatening to take over the whole expanse of the face. Pounding in reverberating rhythms as Nigel holds the other far longer than he should. A fucking crook or a scam artist of a hustler. He had seen the likes in the expanse of his club’s dance floor, offering up all kinds of synthetic drugs in the arsenal. The built-up grime and lingering scent of glitter from the hole-in-the-wall joint, caramelly and vanilla notes of the whiskey and the distinctive stale scent of cigarette had already permeated through his personal cologne, yet it never becomes a layer of his usual sempiternal aroma more than the tenacious cling of dried crimson. His wounds had been long healed, though the clinging nightmares of those recurrent nights couldn’t be shrugged off like his threading consciousness hindering his sight to register his surrounding to materialize into a tangible corporeality.

Those two men he had disposed of not too long before still choirs through the length of his spine and the choice of his poison for the night would have served him as an aria if his pores didn’t ooze with too much unrestrained emotions, pouring like the rain running down the windshield obscuring his projection. The pitch-black fills with the comfort of distant streetlight, the licking zephyr grazing him as it would every cut of grass on a meadow. The memory of having Gabi right next to her continues to fluctuate through the recess of his mind and the stranger’s invasion within his personal space irks him further, fueling potent urge to kill. So he produces the revolver safely tucked behind his back, already fully loaded and hears the distinctive click beneath his finger as his steely gaze bears down against the enigmatic individual before him. “I’m simply not into empty shrieks of erupting flesh and shuddering brutalism for the night. However, if you must come face-to-face with the fucking desperate desire, I’m willing to retaliate.”  

___

As the title of the London Sanctum’s guardian additionally came with his newly appointed title of the Master of Mystic Arts in front of his name, Kaecilius could still feel the tremor coursing through as if every pore and carbon of his skeleton had ceased to exist. Some had taken  _ years _ , even  _ decades _ to have the fire within them grow deep as it understood the curves of the lights and darks of their corporeality, to conjure up such imagery to become more vivid and etch through his own edge of the universe. This was the moment of his well-deserved triumph.  _ How many times he had faced grueling challenges of his training, pushed beyond his shadows and souls as he had set himself on fire? _ His astral body had tirelessly worked to absorb all the knowledge his apprenticeship status could acquire and even when he was already a formidable combatant with years of training in his belt, the amount of unperturbed concentration within the pandemonium it required to achieve such tranquil silence. Even when the deep waters remain tumultuous, his being would remain untouched across the vast waters of space and time. 

Time had stopped and warped into another dimension, before he felt the sensation of being over the edge, restless and irksome like a rock skittering across the stream. Though it had been inadvertent, the failure on his part had slapped and hurtled him into an unfathomable well. At least the gutted fish would make a nice, substantial and nutritious meal out of itself, yet he lived in the moment where he had been out of his comfort zone, where one wrong breath would shatter his bones and he will yet again fall into those rooted memories of long ago. And his own well-trained body would still be raging with rawness and carnal violence. Consecrating and contemplating every curveball and compassion of the cosmos. 

Maddened and grief-struck, it had been ten years since he sought after the grounds of  _ Kamar-Taj, _ a desolate barren place he sought out in his last dauntless measure. Without his disposition of being a professional boxer with his savage, unrelenting streak holding his impeccable composure, standing taller than his encompassing six feet, he had hovered around everyone like a majestic hawk. Consumed with such grandiosity and reducing the others into inferior bottom feeder who deserved to be squashed and wiped off his soles, he was drowning in this ocean of thought even when things weren’t turning into his dream scenario. Like the stars always finding a way to shine despite the darkness, he too, will endeavor upon his innate savagery and transmorph that into something his entirely own. Like a feral big cat not perceiving what ‘fear’ is, until he had been reciprocated the other side of it himself. That vivid, strange, horrid and uncanny feeling of being painfully human, as the incapacitated period bought an endless trail of thoughts. Seconds lingered to be minutes, the quotidian life of his previous life had become a burden that he would endure, as the wounded animal with its vehement sorrow contained in those diaphanous orbs.   

With the circular flaming dimensional gateway behind him on the dead-end stretch of the bleak alleyway and instead of being accompanied by his followers who revel him like a flock of sheep, he’s pursuing his ambulatory and solitary walk as he feels the hubbub of air that begins to fold in itself. Where the thickness of obsidian light splits into the peering light of the dawn. The star-studded sky begins to lit up in rippling surge of clouds as he walks inside the relatively empty bar, nearing its closing time. The Ancient One had specifically requested him to search for one mightily desperate individual in the time of need, as those were, like him, arrogant, so full of himself and self-assured. Yet, he had planned to form a separatist faction, reneging his agreement and defying his former master’s teaching. If he could ever whisper his dream upon the newest member of the zealots and hack the other’s subconscious, that would be half of his work already completed. 

Yet, he’s greeted by the virulent extension of the barrel, extended over the tumultuous air and pointed directly towards his head. The cracks of his enigmatic purple cracks deepen around his deep and sunken gaze. Kaecilius could feel the other’s aura, like the fire that illuminated the night sky. He was the stars, the darkness had overlapped the glowing warmth beneath it. “Don’t you desire to be a survivor, instead of snuffing out your life as it flutters away in the night air? An Icarus repeatedly resurgent as you desperately root your footing into the despicable world. I don’t intend to deny myself from acting out violence nor I would ever succumb in reciprocated savageness.” His movement is utilitarian, nimble as his unperturbed facade peers into the projected column, which propels the bullet right towards his right pupil. As orange sparkler suspends in the air, the shield deflects the velocity against the back wall, not too far away from the other man as the concrete chips away. And slowly, the air begins to crackle like a sheet of crumpled ice as he forces the other into the mirror dimension. 


	2. Chapter 2

Even when his mind is quite occupied with the threading alcohol, as he gently feels the steady influx of adrenaline rapidly fading as he feels weighty eyelids slowly shut once, permeated torpidity seeps faster than familiar smoldering driblets of blood soaking through his shirt. Thrown off by the other’s comment as it serves as a fucking wake-up call, he could literally detect the potent permanency of his sweat and blood already having threaded within every inch of his pores and tanned flesh through his thin undershirt. His animal eyes gleam wild, with the looming expectation, the presence of blood. He could feel the flaring embers rise up from the pit of his stomach. His eardrums ring with countless reverberations of gongs going off, drowning with bleak darkness and equal dreary whirl of snowdrift continuing to entrap them into his own world. The world he wants to entrap  _ forever _ , yet the wretched reel of film becomes a beautiful redemption. Never the one to admit nor exhibit a sliver of weakness as teeth digs into his lower lip, a minute scowl flashes as he glares into the hidden darker orbs, encased in the intricate aubergine cracks. 

More so the feral wildcat with a flare of untamed vigor exuding from his body still, Nigel’s entombed under his own filth of blood and sweat within what is supposed to be his solace sanctuary. The thought alone makes him to feel uncharacteristically worthless and abdicated. A fucking hypocrite upon the graffiti of scars on both his body and mind; for all his non-caring charade of steeliness, he cares so fucking much.  _ How many times he had witnessed those whirlwind of lines and incessant sighs as he laid restless and sleepless, full of those impressions of memories, digging teeth as it threatens to snap on and tear his flesh away? _ Now those memories immediately slide back to his brain as his widened hazel retraces the brushing edge of the bullet. A graze of the skin, just over the curved cartilage as it whooshes past by him. He could literally see the serpentine snarl of the other’s lips behind the overlapped orientalism, or the ornate, indestructible aegis and he’s rendered useless by trepidation. 

Letting himself free from the indistinguishable quagmire, a blend of heavy mist obscuring his view and his molasses-like steps become too languid and grueling. A minute pinch of his brows confirm how mundane a task brings exhaustion over his battered frame, emaciated over with lack of shuteye and solidification of fleeting memories. Having him like clay, without giving him a sliver of complete control, the dominance he sought after as a kingpin of a thriving club had rendered useless and futile. What it seems a lightyear away gradually shortens, the unreachable ectoplasm of unregistered movements is the first to register. The immediate connection coming together in an indestructible chain link. He only perceives, because he breaths violence like oxygen. His diaphanous orbs growing even more brimming, the salty moisture pools as he sleepwalks through it all. He’s still not sure if he’s slipping off to the other side of the dimension or finally succumbing into a deep, deserved oblivion. Like a decapitated head longing for an intrinsic connection with the infinite faculty and undiscriminating succession of fruitless and hapless strokes, he’s asking the unanswered, disturbing questions himself and voices it out aloud. “Who the fuck are you? Don’t fucking blabber about me like you fucking see through me.”

His body bumps against the translucent, yet incomprehensible dimension that seems to overlap with the fleeting reality as fingers crawl over the expanse of the side of the counter. He clutches the revolver without showing more of his shocked flabbergasted notions. Through the warped dynamics of the figure opposite him, there are different degrees of horror - the worst being what Nigel is exactly feeling. His deliberate  _ momentum _ , that attentiveness already having jeopardized with his inebriated state, slips away as he becomes the lost child becoming the wanderer upon his wasted youth. Through the calamity of his visceral manifestation of violence, already ripe with potent images conjured up in his brain, he merely observes through the minute silence.  _ Didn’t he already have the unmistakable evidence of the entry wound, effectively covered beneath the covered bandage and his ashen blonde locks, contouring through his broad forehead? _ And he had already stared and scrutinized the pictures, as if he had been carving his own skin out with a silver blade. His struggles become a most mellifluous aria, his hazel embodying the laced anger - fixated, as a slender chink of light manages to seep in. The air around them about to take on a visible form. 

“You’ve got it all fucking wrong, I’m already a fucking survivor and a leopard isn’t always the monster. I may tear up all the fucking preys but I do that to survive. If you’re such a fucking knowledgeable smart-ass, then fucking enlighten me.” Did the other ever fucking register how significantly difficult things could be, when every night he’s haunted by his beloved’s presence, as slumber turns into both a sweet dream and nightmare he couldn’t break off from.  _ How many times was he in the darkness, solitary, cold and pained and this fucking stranger butts in his way, abruptly forming some kind of fucking wicked magic upon him and speaking cornucopia of enigmatic nonsenses?  _ A fucking complete mess, but he couldn’t blame himself for the choice he had made, that would completely shatter his heart in fragments. Now enraged by the other’s actions as he figures if he couldn’t tear through the hallucination or warped perception or whatever the fuck this was, he would use the force akin to his gushing limbs, propelled by the seizing agglomeration of fury like hellfire the other immediately agitates. Because god fucking knows, no one would have a dauntless nerve to call him a fucking candle, snuffing away without promise.  

__

Kaecilius watches the other with a strained silence, as the man’s affected attitude as tears of his own soul, as scalding as his own fiery soul of a combatant, brims with such volatility.  _ All jagged edges with bitter cynicism.  _ His raging fire contained beneath the orbs which seem to sway in a pendulum. Finding disadvantageous though he had gained an consequent upper edge over the mystic power he has over the mortal without the touch of spell, he ponders over the other’s statement as such forbidden memories of the past resurfaces. The untimely demise of his unborn son, along with his wife, Adria.  _ How many times he had been rejected by his own physical prowess that had been threaded by bitter, rueful chill that would graze his bones? _ The warmth had evaded him, the frolicious nature carved out by demons in his mind. He never wanted this to happen, he just wanted for himself to get _ stronger, persevere and excel _ . Yet, his soul still feels as if suspended in air, on the cusp of trembling down upon the crystals glittering like jewels as he peers into the other man’s  _ fragile _ , yet  _ tenacious _ soul. Perhaps a true Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that hides beneath such contumacious outer layer, turning even more supernova with the tutelary soul of love and limerence. 

_ Didn’t his own come in a self-destructive way also, just like his supposedly pupil had within this space where nothing but suffocating air whirled along like desiccated leaves? _ Like a laser-like light being swallowed by the unfathomable abyss of obsidian water. A deja-vu, his own had followed with amalgamation of accumulated and influential darkness while keeping his own light etched within the chambers of his heart. There had been no such thing as great  _ suffering, regret, memories _ ….everything simply refused to be forgotten, even a great love. The irrefutable thing he could relate beyond recognition and understanding.  _ That’s what was sad about life, and also what’s wonderful about it, especially about his own. He was a slave to it, _ even when it wraps its textured coils around like constrictor, squeezing the life out of him. He had transpired that ache and grief to rise tall. Appearing invulnerable beneath the fragile heart, standing grandiose as the folded narrow corridor of the bar itself becomes unusually stil. Through the meditation, he feels his soul become emergent with such concept, where his physicality doesn’t stop from the boundary he retains upon like a speck of dust within the multiverse. 

In his past, with his diminishing eyesight, he had been entrapped in miasma. Though most of his company provided him knowledge, guidance and support, his training had pushed him beyond recurrent unconsciousness. An added adventure along his herculean journey of repeated failures and rejections, sorrows and bouts of fury amidst his clicking benevolence and patience. Had he ever made it till here without such brutality as his body bore the impressions of such persistence and ongoing drive. Where the gravity became so strong and his dedication paid off and in this moment, time seems to disintegrate and space becomes so distorted. The other’s figure becomes an infinity contained in an orbit of his own creation. Yet, the powers had been equally divided. With such fundamental  _ empathy _ Kaecilius lacked, the man opposite him seemed to bear it all. Where shared eclipse ended, the open space between them foretold the identically different personalities of their dominant drive and force. For life as they know it could be so terrible in many ways; it could be  _ disastrous, depressing, blue  _ and _ ultimately fatal.  _

“I’m Master Kaecilius, the protector of the London Sanctum,” he had existed, experienced, but was he living the life he had fully intended under her training and guardianship?  _ No _ . “Soon to be diverted away to oppose my own hypocritic master, who keeps forbidden spells under her greedy clutch and all she teaches me had been lies.” The tattoos covering his permanent graffiti, both prickling gashes and contusions, valleys and ridges of his ample collections seem to widen as his words sever and exhale through his larynx. And his nerve-damaged eyes, non-functional as a defunct appurtenances and a resounding symbol of his desolation, along with his torn ligaments, jagged distortions and loss of his hearing, which often accompanied seasoned boxers that had been completely healed become painfully real in this very moment, as if he had temporarily rendered powerless without his magic. Now he could perceive farther and wider than ever before, with the aid of mystic forces coursing through him in such bleeding passion and potent fuel like bones and blood of his perilous past. He was the flower that couldn’t blossom with the fertile soil and nutrients alone.  _ The power, responsibility, the sense of ownership _ , yet not everything was complete. The chill licking over his spine intensifies, though he should be used to the sensation by now. 

The other man’s thrown punch is completely unexpected, as his curved lips set straight, as soon as he is greeted by the bare knuckle that bares the complete weight. With the faint trace of sanguine upon the inner lining of his mouth, Kaecilius’ straightened figure arches back slightly, as he recovers from the haymaker. “Life is a wheel, a change in progress. How can you be sure if your ‘survival instinct’ destroys you in an imminent future? Sacrificing a lot to gain a little? To gain your so-called ephemerality of pleasure, you’re having your heart broken, soul crushed and morals down. So I’m giving you the chance to correct it all.” Slowly folding his arms together and drawing a half-circle, lattice-like patterns scatter in mid-air, floating and sparkling against his fingertips as he draws overlapping shapes of circles and squares. “Make shields, conjure weapons, or just for the showy hell of it, whatever’s possible with the mystic energy.” The silence stretches, with unsaid words as his gifted visualization concocts the roads he had walked; as if those memories became dissolved sunlights. Smothering and blinking like the city lights slanting over,  _ immortalized _ , not hidden away like he once had within the darkness of his attic with a cadaverous face.  


	3. Chapter 3

His lips ajar as Kaecilius maintains his unfazed, stoic way of maintaining his composure even when the man had thrown back and had wobbled a few steps backwards. As the forceful projectile drives his whole body to lean and deliver, the resistance immediately has his knuckles to ripple and reverberate with the enigmatic man’s equally high and jutted cheekbone. Nigel was without an ounce of hesitation when exerting violence and persistent, but he wasn’t free from feeling his heart skipping beat as it jumped to lodge just beneath his adam’s apple. The man must be a mortal, yet he maintains his indestructible caliber and the smug smile the other wears serves as his own medicine. As if a knife hadn’t already been plunged into his flesh with reckless abandon. “Duplicity exists wherever the human condition exists, I have no fucking clue where you’re from,  _ Kaecilius _ , but I’m thinking we’re not so fucking different from each other. Yes, we might have evolved ourselves with darwinism and fucking survival of the fittest and all, but nevertheless, I’ve placed myself in the same bloody spectrum as those worthless scums,” he’s not completely liberated from an ecstasy of savageness, yet his own flesh sings of the recurrent throb of prickles and flaring intensity of rapid flint, continuously striking as he feels as if someone had spread his fingers, twisted them one over the other as he hears them break one by one, as pins and needles jam against the porous skeleton. 

“If you learned so fucking much from your master, then why stab her in her back?” His own fingers arched, turning claws of an eagle upon his revolver. He’s very well aware of the empty casing beneath him and the crisp air within whatever this alternate dimension was - everything seemed  _ relative _ . The reality was still unfolding outside his peripheral vision and the rows of faint illuminating street lights glows just bright enough to keep his awareness, to move forward. Yet, so dimly that he’s always within that slanting multitudes of shadows. Just about bearable at first, then it escalates swiftly into a realm of excruciation, as flesh rubs raw, a mess of blood and watery discharge oozes from the wound. A gleam of white amid the filth, his own breath matching the rapidity of the assaulters’ grueling caress of pain. The familiar choirs within the cranium of his brain would have served as arias if his pores didn’t ooze with too much unrestrained emotions, pouring like the rain running down the windshield obscuring his projection. The pitch-black fills with the comfort of streetlight, the licking zephyr grazing him as it would every cut of grass on a meadow. The memory of having Gabi right next to him, as they had whispered a sensual caress upon each other lingers more potent than the urge to kill. 

_ No, he knew he couldn’t bring himself to kill Kaecilius. _ Not only because he knew every arsenal he pretty much had had been ineffective and like the wind dwelling on impenetrable thing, it would be merely grazing the surface. Despite this impossibility, he feels a certain level of sensation breeze through him as its edges merged fuzzily into the imperceptible boundary of the dimension which they occupied. Perhaps he sought to possess the power in his heart’s desire, too, but right now, he was trying to bend over backward to put everything that happened to him into something that could make more sense. In other words, looking for twists and distortions that shaped the other man, in order to fit what he thought should be there. _ Living, breathing, yet breathing inferno of a forest fire than a human’s exhale. _ A continuation of merging of their hearts, so to speak. As his thoughts coalesce, he could feel the trickle of crimson curve down against his defined neck, from that skin wound from the ricocheted bullet. 

“Maybe you’re speaking for yourself than asking the fucking questions, you’re all bloody jagged rocks at the end of the cascading waterfalls, all force and no hesitation. Have you ever have a fucking plethora of nightmares, latching onto you like inescapable, burdensome chains that would encumber you down?” He’s snarling, with emotion-brimmed hazel threatening to burst out of his eye sockets. Bare and beautiful as a slate-gray sky of the daybreak. So he would find more deadly substitute of blades, broken bottles, more empty cartridge casings and a new form of death; all the mutilated violence upon his kills and deep inside him, soaring flames would pour out and caress his aura, until he extinguished in his own woundedness and burnt surface. 

The view of the flamboyant spectacle of trailing sparks becomes mesmerizing enough for him to peer into the construction for a moment, but they seem  _ ostentatious _ and  _ ingenuine _ . He could appreciate more of the raw and carnal crack of slatted ribcage, ravaged viscera, it’s something essentially and fundamentally potent image and he was becoming more apoplectic with rage at the words of the other, who seemed to graze at the surface of the life, not living it fully. “You’re the fucking one who needs ‘re-correcting,’ instead of being a fucking coward with showy magic, a jarring reminder of your indecisiveness. Like you worded so efficiently, we all live in a fucking infinity. The self-destructiveness, violence, they all belong forever in my mind, filling me with fury and fire.” And with the other’s dropped face, he knows that reality had pierced the air like that very magic that took its shape, yet the concocted image dissipates as easily as it existed. And then, his own hand splays and tightens around the base of the neck, and he feels the fuzzy fire boiling the other’s blood,  _ a primal sensation  _ he knows both could appreciate. 

___

_ Just how many nights did his soul had to get scarred further by the extend of utter damage and deep gashes caused by the nightmares? _ Those nights brought the untamed beast within him, with gleaming and gnarling teeth, his heart macerated by the jagged shards. It would be better to gauge them out in chunks than going after fragmented pieces coursing through the veins. Each jumpy ebb confirming its baneful existence. Shattered remnants hang by threads, spawning traces of pre-existing strands of memories as he plucks the stake off from his heart, letting it become septic. Lashing out beneath the aid of distorted blurriness, even more intensified by the intoxication, he  _ was _ an amateur with such instrument of virtuoso. As a former boxer, he had high streaks of triumphant victories, which was enough on its own to boost his unattainable ego, yet as his damaged orbs sought to end it all, but it was only the beginning as the fate had its other plans. Within each jagged brokenness of the shards, his own arrogance would stab him in the back to become coarse and gritty, turning them into needles with rising decibel within his mind. He must have reminded himself countless times. For this isn’t his predestined demise.

_ But not anymore, _ “Having slipped off from such caliber of a predator’s status, didn’t you? That in itself is downright pathetic. Do you want to be wasted and devoured, be snuffed out like fluttering candlelight, or better, a moth so narrow-minded to burn themselves out with such fragile mortality? If you’re ever to become my apprentice, you have to drag yourself out of this dismality and persevere and excel.”  _ How many times he had been rejected by his own physical prowess that had been threaded by bitter, rueful chill that would graze his bones?  _ The warmth had evaded him, the frolicious nature carved out by demons in his mind. He never wanted his own degradation to happen, he just wanted for himself to break that chain. Now he’s standing, looming over the other broken man’s presence as his peering, encompassing gaze continues to fixate onto him. “Time is the enemy, don’t you want to go back in time, mend what had gone wrong; all the wretched tragedies and mishaps and revert everything back in normal? I desire to mesh all the dimensions together because there are things on the other side that would make human lives better;  _ like the cure for every sickness _ , by gaining immortality, where no pain and sorrow would exist.“

The Ancient One was not being truthful in the way that she has been teaching magic, teaching sorcery. He believes that she’s withholding secrets that should not be withheld, and thinks that maybe it’s not a bad thing if other dimensions absorb our reality and that benefit would be gaining immortality; draw inextinguishable energy from the dark dimension, as she had been absorbing it to live centuries. The heat of the illumination, intensified by the dancing panels of the mirror dimension penetrates through his robe, growing in intensity as if the candle’s fluttering edges flickered and widened over his straightened spine, agglomerating with his own agitation. His mind briefly distracts, as peaking desire to kill Nigel there and then becomes such exquisite lure. All it would take is a swift flick, a mere stretch of his hands as a hollow, clear crystal blade forms between his hands. The sharpness was only to be matched with a virtuoso Japanese samurai with his katana and not even spilling forth a droplet of crimson, he could watch Nigel’s life fast and fade away as he stands tall. “You know very well none of the tricks in your sleeves would work against me and I could still reduce you down to blood and bones within this mirror dimension,  _ Nigel _ , no one would ever know of your whereabouts.”

If he ever wished, with his strengthening and expanding magical forces, he would be able to mend such calamity whole, as if it didn’t ever happen; it’d be fatuous to see the artifact he had planning to collect upon his possession fall beneath other masters for him to give them chances to acquaint with the contained sorcery. His unblinking unconscionable hazel fixates upon Nigel and he could feel the unconscious dreams become reality before him as all the recollections construct itself. A quiet kind of awareness, but he can’t ever deter and resist such emotions humming and whispering through the crevices of his brain.  _ How dare the other man allow him to slip into such fragility, a magnetism of gravity he couldn’t break part from? _ Nigel’s words sting at the back of his eyes and it leaves his stomach in knots. Nothing could ever shatter him in fragments and no one talked about his griefs. Yet, his memories were perpetuated evermore; he was still living  _ in the past, in denial, blind.  _ He’s more than familiar with successive blood ribbons pouring out and the shock of stark red against the grimy floor, which remains to be still warm, retaining the sultry heat of the summer. He’s the epitome of a rabid canine, panting with its red tongue rolling, as a continuous trail of his own crimson dribbles as he himself becomes an embodiment of a dying venomous snake as obstinate strand of life slips away with a weakening breath. 

His muscles are efficient and rapid, as he had already planned how to make the other man succumb to the heavy weight, as with each passing second, the cessation of mortality would set in. His eyes become basilisk, as a riot of blood-lust flashes within. “You’re not even qualified enough to be blessed with such immortality with such blasphemous thoughts. Such sad sight, as I would witness just how worthless your life would become, as you gasp for breath, gradually exhausting yourself.” His intense gleaming hazel meet Nigel’s own as he glares even more fiercely, as he becomes well-aware of his frenzied heart; as the crystal blade would become the needle and the other man would merely end up as another one that defied him, another lucidity upon his fog of lies. Gradually piercing, Nigel’s words makes the cracks of his heart gape; if he hadn’t been feeling too inebriated with his own vulnerability and memories confining him, he would’ve only taken a heartbeat to dispose him without even batting an eyelash, but his dreams begin to take shape. Breathing deep in and out, as unbridled emotions bubble over, becoming scalding acid upon his already cracked skin. A whirl of sorrow, as the warmth transpires and agglomerates with the other’s feverish, fervent fire of graphite dust and luminescence through the veins. 


	4. Chapter 4

He couldn’t tell if Kaecilius had been wholly affected by the squeeze of his own fingers as the foreseen violence continues to cling onto his aura like the raindrops suspended in the air. His held breath becomes even more so exquisite before it takes an immediate plunge into the wrath of his brand of hellfire.  _ What if he couldn’t ever inflict physical wounds, but he had all the power to penetrate through the curves, shadows, the ins and outs of the other man, leaving overlapping marks as his own words turn corrosive acid upon Kaecilius’ viscera? _ Though he’s the one who’s on the cusp of trembling down, headfirst as the whirling slither of flames weave through the gray matter of his brain, he doesn’t fear nor think death’s the end. It’s something humanity fears beyond anything else, but it ups the quality of his life, though he had been plummeting down to the nadir in bitter grief and regrets. He already had been broken by the life itself, as it turns into tenacious pricks of icy icicles.  _ Didn’t he risk his heart and shatter it in the adventure of his fucking lifetime, be swallowed and spat up, betrayed, hurt as blood became staccato of ripples, coursing all around him in heaps? _

With such accumulated scars rendering him to become as malleable as the galaxy. Living the life of the tormented souls as he carried on his wretched life. A phantasmical presence of her, both supposedly becoming the celestial rejuvenation and fragmented dreams. He was already accustomed to the paroxysmal euphoria, of slipping life, as he had laid in complaisance;  _ an epitome of scattered stardusts upon torpor-ridden orbs. _ “Not as fucking pathetic as you, who’s evermore in denial.” He doesn’t need to further elaborate his point; he’d rather be the snuffed flame than be the flamboyant and ostentatious firework that scatters the sky with empty promises and futile philosophical clutch. If he gained immortality,  _ he wouldn’t reverse time, _ play the dangerous game of letting all of his mistakes and flaws re-correct themselves. Each stretching day would be meaningless, full of broken breaths, clinging on to both nothing and memories. Instead of genuine affections and exquisite aria coursing through his veins, it would merely be empty shells, scraps of severed limerence and smothered sensation that would leave fake promises. 

He didn’t need to tiptoe to touch the sky as he bids his last farewell, yet again as the films reel. He could feel the pin-up girl ink ripple with a gradual swallow, as static blood electrifies through the veins. He would reduce yet again to the color of steel, along with the faded color without jubilant tenacity.  _ Third time really was the fucking charm. _ The laceration to his side, the fucking gunshot to his head that would’ve surely sent him straight down to the morgue, but here he was, about to expire beneath trickling blood and jaded breaths. He was oh-so-familiar with the nerve endings sparkling like jewels, as they coagulate to become the whooping applause of the celebration. Along multitudes of crimson splatters and his own pulsating heartbeat turning like a hide drum’s palpitations become thousands of voices, piled up on top of each other, it wasn’t an unknown feeling that would stimulate something deep within his core, passing through him like a continuous electric shock. The soaring skyscraper rearing up into the sky with unforeseeable end. Even when it could crumble like tower of Babel, the demolition itself would be calamitous. He would be in the very midst of it, within the hubbub of glass chamber, crumbling and severing, and he would die instantaneously as if he had severed the electric cord of a set of blasting amps. Then, the silence as it leaves in its wake in shockingly stark. 

He merely lifts a pale eyebrow, looking more silvery beneath the faint moonbeam reflected through the windowpane and still-rippling planes of the mirror dimension. The bar itself appearing even more darker with the portent destruction. His lips stretch in vitreousness;  _ fragile, yet malleable until he snaps and shatters _ . Ransacking his mind for something to say, but except to show how submissive and determined he could be with his own life having slipped away from his grasp.  _ What if he couldn’t live to encounter another break of dawn and see the last of everything else? _ Even when his body becomes corpse and his soul is no more than a mirage, a whirling fleck of stardust, he’s reviving himself; resurgent upon the ground on his own within those unfurling memories. “You’re just hitting the fucking snooze over and over again. Do you think you can relive and disregard all the past traumas and painful hits?” Fingers curl and rip through Kaecilius’ robe, as his face tinges with coral peach. Even colors appear bolder, as he’s forced to take a step back, with a foreign intrusion upon his chest cavity. “Do you really think I’m fucking afraid of death? Go right ahead, the path of your lost wandering should worsen with my death as I reunite with my beloved. I’ve managed to evade it once, cheat the fucking second time around even when I was supposed to die, I’ve got fucking nothing to lose this time.” 

The magic itself doesn’t scare him, it’s the same as the gleaming silvery blade in his mind as he feels the scalding heat penetrate him; surely and steadily. Flashing a smile, a bittersweet, rueful one as more droplets fall from the other’s cracked eyes, through a cracked humanity, where thorns are clumped, no ray of light would ever pass through the dense forest, enchanted with dark magic. He could be the one to roam, continuing on his way deeper as he wanders into this woods as he offers no determination to grasp onto the failing consciousness. He could still taste dulcet caramel of whiskey upon red-tinged lips and he could taste blood upon the corner as well. It must be his recently stitched head, outstretching. As the other’s weight entraps him upon the life-enchanted walls and strands of muscles, his fleeting thought finally voices out before his limbs fall limply beneath his side;  _ Your fucking bravery is a fake facade, your supposed courage a suspended dream.  _

__

As much as he wants to deny it, Nigel’s words cut through him like a butter does with a heated knife. Kaecilius wouldn’t need an addendum of the scalding temperature added into his already boiling aura, as the mirror dimension seem to turn into a kiln. The splitting images of himself, halves growing into eights, into thousands of severed connections continues to warp his perception as he reduces into an inconsequential multitudes of souls, plucked right out of his anger-fueled body. His insides had been already reduced into a wondrous spectacle of viscera, crimson, blasted gray matter as empty hazel remains transfixed onto one location;  _ Nigel’s limp body beneath his trembling grasp _ . Veined, spiked fingers akin to talons dig further into the stilled tavern of Nigel’s throat, as the energy of a giant metropolitan hub of the distant city that never sleeps accompany with riddled bullet holes within his gradually wilting heart.  _ Evermore in denial, how his nightmares had came in bursts and often between breakdowns. _ No matter how many attempts at meditations and diverting his attention to something else, upon that forbidden spell that would set every wronged, subversive activities to correct. For all his silent discussions of free thought, in truth, _ he could never tolerate a true dissentient like the man before him. _

_ How many times did he gaze into undulating mirage, of his family, just taken the first flight as they had broken out of the chrysalis and had gone through an agonizing state of pupa? _ He had never speculated their fulfilling life abruptly coming to an end as he had been sabotaged, thus his instinct to reach greatness had been thwarted;  _ his fundamental drive had quickly waned _ . Hidebound when pontificating his philosophical virtues, moribund except when he’s completely encompassed by the weight of the darkness and his strengthening sorcery, then his aimlessly drifting heart would soon hold fire and become ablaze, thrum with lingering concept of true life and love. Would he ever turn what hurts the most and truly let go of that infliction which came with Adria and his son’s absence? What would make the difference, when he’s etched with the emblem of the darkened soul and he feels scattered like the star, a lone figure stumbling upon the shore as his undying obsession never ceases to exist? It still aggravates him to pursue his thriving life with wild resolve more in return. Those drawn-out waking hours stretch into fuzzy consciousness. Sleeping in only minutes’ snatches, before slipping off into a temporary oblivion as he had confined himself behind the dimmed atmosphere of the hole-in-the-wall bar he used to frequent. An invisible shackle placed around his ankles as his spine tingles with tenseness, the petrification becomes too burdensome and weighty for him to be liberated from. 

No, time was his mortal enemy; it took all of his memories away and made it into some kind of incurable, terminal disease. Not when it comes to you and me. Prodding and cutting him deeper, twisting its serrated edge upon his damned heart. “No, you’re not fucking fading away from me, reneging away from the promise you’re about to hold.”  _ Oh, he’ll have Nigel to reach out, instead of him extending his hand, because ever since their predestined, yet yielding such an unexpected outcome, would become ubiquitous upon the sanctums _ . He finds a microscopic calmness upon the painful surge of inflammation bubbling beneath the layers of robes and his cracked expanse of purple gaze wavers in ponderance. He could hurl the other body and let that crash through the inevitable gravitational pull of the warped skyline he alone would concoct upon unknown. The unpredictable ambiance excites him through the indistinctive boundaries, where the conservative consciousness loosens a knot or two, yet Nigel’s lips are still sewn shut and he’s growing agitated. More like rolling waves, everything becomes hypnotically strange.  _ Sad and compelling at the same time.  _

“You got what you had coming, what you deserved, just like the order of the universe, nothing is arbitrary.” Imperceptibly, his fingertips graze just underneath the tail of Nigel’s shirt, attempting to pluck the revolver out of the other’s tightened clutch. His arched back straightens with tingling sensation as he feels the grip grow warm with a trailing path of sweat. As the back of his hand brushes against Nigel’s slightly exposed side beneath too-tight button up, he distinguishes a oddity; a hard to miss when he had been familiar with his own valleys and ridges and gnarled edges. Perhaps, maybe perhaps the man hadn’t been all that pathetic; he bore the near-fatal wounds of the past; he wasn’t a creature of letting doubt settle in to every surface of his skeleton, nor he questioned each and every motive he carried himself, yet now he was. Where the bubbling throngs of ruckus immediately assaults his tympanums, just like how effortlessly he had shut off all the outwardly disturbances. And he witnesses such impression that traverses Nigel’s side and Kaecilius hears the shrieking screams of the viscera, turning into a sonorous aria of the battle-cry as a hint of tangible warmth crosses his orbs. 

His own ephemeral reflection looks over at his previous self like a grim reaper himself. Where nothing remains visible outside the rows of blackened windows, as the plane splits by the whirling air, his fingers curl against the fabric enough to turn his knuckles white. He had taken numerous trips back to back, yet this particular one is the one that submerges him in startling colors and disturbing questions. Empty, with his heart bleached black and parched with the parade of rain, ripped at the seams even when his crystal blade had almost pierced Nigel’s heart, instead of his own. Through his translucent walls, another entity jumps out after letting his own figure kneel with the fingers still clutched upon the other man like a lifeline. Ablaze in all his mistaken glory, perhaps it was a bit of humanity left in him that had decided not to kill Nigel. The flushed wound of the other still emits the radiant crimson, as raptured soul would unfurl away within his grasp,  _ in any second now.  _


	5. Chapter 5

A familiar stillness, as the world seems to cave in on him and fall inside his viscera.  _ Swoosh, swoosh _ , an intermittent air pushing through every inch of his vein amplifies through his eardrums as it seems to tear through the fragile tympanum. He could feel the blood, coagulated with the other’s slow thrust course through the cavern of his heart with a significant, forceful push. The vivacity and vividness of his dilating hazel beneath his strewn shut lids deepen further like an unfathomable well, a column of light green specks tinting bright colors into the cornea like a spilled bucket of paint. Nigel’s appendages quiver in multitudes, as if threaded with countless invisible strands, almost inadvertently as his fleeting consciousness takes a sharp detour. His pallor deepens along with the heavy tinge of dark circles beneath his sunken orbs, the clamminess accompanying him as his form still remains in a relative obsidian darkness. Yet, there’s the resounding streaks of light, bathing upon his skin with the warmth he thought would never exist. Maybe it was the cool, crisp breeze that complements the attractive ridges and valleys of his strong neck or maybe it was Kaecilius’ tenor, that admission through such stone-hearted stubbornness. 

It’s the succumbing feeling of euphoria;  _ in hedonism, destruction could be utterly beautiful and it echoes right back with a loud bass and percussion of drums. _ His feelings are evermore accumulative in his heart’s mountains and he realizes how ravenously starving and thirsty he had been all those years, without knowing how the genuine love tastes like. His last exhale briskly breathes past him out of his saddened chest, that unbearable weight, along with the essence of him whirling away like the vanishing whirl of the smoke. He was finally to be that empty vessel with his vagabond spirit wandering around in a void and he aches to never stop hurting. Never the thing of tranquil solace; he wants that threading chill of blood, bones and memories, as those infuse with his already festering wounds and the mantras of his cold, his non-existence without the supernova of pain making him real. That turmoiled delirium upon electrical pulses of his heart. Such indelible memories unfurl and gives his life’s meaning - and yet, he’s paralyzing in acceptance, as if it had been become more of a quotidien habit than his passion driven exploit of lovers and it becomes an inexorable quietude upon contrasting hubbub of his veins. 

Kaecilius’ touch becomes the ink blotches haloing through Nigel’s heart, as a small puddle continues to build upon his chest cavity. It builds from the other man’s regrets, the dense forest of veils and untapped powers, still yearning to be unleashed. Both had housed killers, bred, fundamentally innate through their unified memories of love and loss and all that. More than just livid bruises and blades, their vessels rusted with such unrealized drive from both ends.  _ Just fucking imagine what we would be capable of; with your fucking mysticism, spells, magic or whatever trick you’ve got beneath those fingertips and my unfurling, wandering beast of empathy, vehement and powerful than the sweeping wildfire _ . He could feel the clumped fibers of his muscles swell and expand, beyond the mirror dimension which they occupy with bated breaths. The air of his true nature, of the emotions ooze as his head wound does. Such an intimate swell upon their short-lived ruckus as he feels something stir within him - that invisible, what he thought as an nonexistent entity that spills forth as an assailing spillage of the wavering flame, continuously wrapping through him as his thoughts cross a boundary. Perhaps his own soul hadn’t left the premise of the sphere just yet. It penetrates through his skin with such force and grandiosity beneath Kaecilius’ grasp and with a breath caught between his lungs, he feels a forceful shove, as if his own corporeality had been projecting his own astral body to meet the other’s. 

And as soon as he comes to his senses, he’s gazing deep into the grim crackles of Kaecilius’ hazel, surrounded by mysticism and his limbs pass right through, as does the other’s gaze upon him. “What in the fucking world have you done,” he’s stone-hearted in that moment, yet he feels the oscillating ripple of his own supersensible soul before death. “Did you just save me from my one-way fucking ticket to limbo or am I fucking alive yet again?”Words become as coarse as sea salt, as his own impermanence and the permanent association his body goes through the near moment of oblivion, seemingly holding an infinity begins to feel unbearable. Yet, contrastingly to his harrowing words, he could feel his unrestrained form completely part away from his seemingly lifeless form, still clutched by the other man as the scene locks in a fluttering snapshot. His heart hammers so frantically that the beats resonate through his head and mouth. His long matted hair covering half of his face as it drapes across his face as the torpor of the drug, his weighing form wears off. His limbs, which seemed to move under a puppetry becomes unhindered and liberated, the fading afterglow of the movement lingers as he lifts his knee up, preventing his sleek body from sliding off the side to be submerged within his body, still unconscious. 

His steely facade slowly eases, as a crooked grin gradually sketches over his form as he pushes Kaecilius’ form to the rippling wall closest by him, which only takes a pivot of his hips. “You still want me as your so-called fucking pupil. Would you then, not have your heart blood drip onto the floor and have the whole fucking world crash upon us?”Words fail to utter out, as he summons the last bit of strength before being aware that his second whirl of energy body, that seems to pervade all space gradually flays from his lower half. And when he does, they wound more like a disconnected static, than anything else. “Would you live a life of simultaneous joy and pain, an inseparable company upon one another as we valiantly fight through them together? I’ve been already fucking broken, so had you or better, you’re in a fucking process of it.” It could be the most unexpected companionship he had ever had, but he knows once things kick in, just maybe, they could become something else. As his nightmares bring upon the most joyous and blissful recollections and the harsh realities of the world vanishes within that reeling moment. And his stars are falling. The last streak becomes the whirling drift upon the crackling glass as the seams seal, then another bout of silence accompanies him. 

___

His own astral body projects from the boundary of his physicality effortlessly, and threads of his translucent self moves like the autumn’s brisk and chilling breeze upon Nigel’s more slowly unfurling whirl of smoke-like projection. They’re locked in an equilibrium of battle, even when Kaecilius’ own form, charged with years of mysticism coating him like a coat of armor upon layers of his scarred skin and past, overwhelms Nigel’s more humanized, raw and honest form, brimming with equal measure of grief-struck violence and dark grimness that justified his means of killing. The feeling of dread and excitement cuts through him and there’s something he cannot quite place. A certain kind of emotions where his oil strokes, permanent, immovable, defining and resilient, becomes that of blotched watercolor; its strokes still immutable and sharp, yet there’s more leniency and pliability upon the medium. He could peer through the other man, and through the familiar features of Nigel’s static electricity as their bodies halt in the space and time, fluttering with blurry edges like unperturbed surface of the outstretched ocean, he reads the other’s resounding energy, his potential, like an unfolding story written just for each other. It’s extremely rare moment, that he draws upon the scent and mind. 

_ Was he more like a cracked vase?  _ To mend his impatient heart of feral grief and in memorial of his beloved, his transpired anger had been eyeing the forbidden practice that he had heard of,  _ the Dark Dimension  _ as a place without time where he and his followers would become immortal. He knew that the Ancient One herself drew power from the Dimension and believed her to be a hypocrite as she forbade others from doing the same.  _ Would he put in the fresh flowers to blossom and chooses to nourish and cherish it to certain extend as he maintains his expanding mysticism, to see the humanity wilt away beneath all of his grief and sorrows? _ yet once he starts to give enough of himself outwardly, the vessel wouldn’t be simply enough to hold his loud flamboyance; it’ll shatter, water will drip onto the floor, he’ll be reduced to being something that needs to be discarded. He could feel his glassy heart rattle in the gust of wind. The damned stirring of his mind only took a minute thread of his memory to stir his whole expanse of subconscious to go out of haywire. The fluttering flame is fluctuating and quiet, yet loud and overwhelmingly all-encompassing. His breathing becomes jagged, as if something unforeseeable had been scraping through his windpipe. 

Though domineering and powerful, his chest seems to cave in, as if he had taken a direct blow over his heart. He would like to deny the fact that it had been his own body telling him that Nigel had just breached through his mind just for a fraction of a second. “This is your extension, away from the boundary of where your corporeality ends. Not encumbered by the logic of your physicality, don’t you feel the crevasses forming upon your body, you’re no more of incomplete, locked within your untapped potential of energy.” It’d mean that he himself had room to grow, and as he had yet to blossom to his fullest potential, they will continually push each other to get beyond the crimson waterfall and streaking light upon the midst of their separate lives. 

Beneath the layers of traditional robes Kaecilius donned, there laid numerous distortions, the permanent graffiti of his tattoos, which had been both prickling needles and contusions, valleys and ridges of his ample collections and encountering the jagged branch of Nigel’s own brush of mortality had instilled more sense of hope, that Nigel could be the one who would bring him the satisfaction which he desired. He bore nerve-damaged eyes, non-functional as a defunct appurtenances and a resounding symbol of his desolation before and it had been completely healed, along with his torn ligaments, jagged distortions and loss of his hearing, which often accompanied seasoned boxers after his extensive training. Compared to how he had been riddled with imperfections, Nigel had been a relatively clean canvas, with honest and raw energy that he could empower. Now Kaecilius could perceive farther and wider than ever before, with the aid of mystic forces coursing through him in such bleeding passion and potent fuel like bones and blood of his perilous past, along with his understanding of Nigel’s grief and sorrows, for he was the flower that couldn’t blossom with the fertile soil and nutrients alone. The power, responsibility, the sense of ownership, and staggering burden. Nigel was like the unclaimed relic he sought to possess, and even when its broken and flawed state, it would still make sure to cause such harmed calamity in wrong hands. 

“You will not die, just yet. You’ll face multitudes of challenges and face destruction and wreckage, something far greater than what you have witnessed in the secular world,”the changed skin around his eyes darken to aubergine and the outlined silver and cracked surface intensifies, as Kaecilius utters the empowering sorcery upon Nigel’s forehead, the carved orange line trails upon his forehead, as a small fissure begins to sketch through the corner of the man’s eyes. Such potently threading darkness hadn’t laid its full force upon Nigel, as it had him. “At the end of the day, we’d return to our own quarters, find satisfaction at accumulated energy as drops become streams, we’ll soon witness the demolition of humanity and defeat death and time, together.” Even when Nigel doesn’t quip and offer his own piece of moral philosophy, Kaecilius well knows his words had penetrated through the astral body of his, becoming all the snippets of broken pieces, still leading the other towards him with their shared energy. For the present will become the past and as he stands still, with Nigel’s body pressed against the crackling surface of the dissipating mirror dimension, he archives the recollections within this space and hurls the other’s heavier form over his shoulder. The silvery lines grow more in opalescence, yet, the window to his darkness diminishes and as if the curtains of his steely obstinance had been lifted, the golden glow of the daybreak becomes undeniable in their existence. He’s made of darkness and void, and though they’re inherently dark, there’s a firm ray of spotlight along the shadows, where they merge and blend in. As the sparkling orange orbits around them as Kaecilius’ robe flings to the side, this very dimension closes behind them, as they land amidst the barren desert. Nigel’s flesh and bones would heal and though they’re not still fully familiar with each other, they walk the same floor now. With leveled eyes and gaze of the starless night sky as the shines around their hazels grow brighter. They would proceed to confabulate about the point, where they would breath their bittersweet breaths beneath the orange sky as they float away to the restless sea. 


End file.
